


Promise at Pitioss

by fallintosanity (yopumpkinhead)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 10:03:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11146194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/fallintosanity
Summary: Noctis and his retinue learn about an ancient, mysterious ruin called Pitioss, and seek it out in the hope that it contains one of the Royal Arms. But Pitioss is full of strange architecture and stranger magic, and none of them are prepared for what happens when Noctis goes into the ruin alone.(Contains minor spoilers for Pitioss and Costlemark.)





	Promise at Pitioss

**Author's Note:**

> Pitioss is my favorite dungeon in FFXV by far, and I was sad that there's absolutely no story related to it at all. From a gameplay standpoint, it's obvious why your companions don't follow you into the dungeon - given the precision platforming involved, they'd be massive distractions at best and huge liabilities at worst. But none of the guys address the fact that Noctis goes into Pitioss alone, and then stays in there for (in-universe) days at a time, which given how overprotective they tend to be, felt odd to me. There's also no in-universe explanation for Pitioss's unique death/respawn mechanic, and Noctis doesn't address that, either.
> 
> So I wrote a story about it. :)

“Grandpa’s notes call it ‘Pitioss’,” Talcott said. “It’s an old structure near the Rock of Ravatogh.”

They sat around the table in the main room of the Cape Caem cabin, Prompto playing _King’s Knight_ with his feet on Noctis’s lap, Gladio tilting his chair back far enough that Noctis was amazed that he hadn’t fallen over yet. Talcott knelt on his own chair so that he could reach to point on the map spread out across the table, his finger tapping a spot north and slightly east of Ravatogh. They’d been in Lestallum when Noctis had overheard two men talking about a lost treasure hoard somewhere near the Rock of Ravatogh. Ignis had asked Talcott to see if Jared’s notes held any information about such a place, and Monica had called them last night to tell them Talcott had found something.

“But that’s all he knew about it,” Talcott continued. “Apparently it’s really dangerous around there - lots of monsters and daemons. He said only a few people have ever even found it and returned, and no one could figure out how to get in.”

“Probably a wild goose chase,” Gladio said, shaking his head. “Whole kingdom’s lousy with old ruins and most of ‘em are full of nothing but daemons.”

“That jabberwock at the bottom of Costlemark had a Royal Arm,” Noctis pointed out. “We know there’s more out there.”

“And they may not even be in Lucis,” Gladio argued. “Remember what those hunters said?”

Noctis turned to Ignis, who was leaning against the kitchen divider and murmuring the occasional tip to Monica where she was cooking dinner. “Specs? What do you think?”

Ignis considered, pushing his glasses up his nose and studying Talcott for a moment. The kid looked eager, excited; Noctis knew how happy it made him to help them. “I think it’s worth a look, at least,” Ignis said finally. “We’re not going anywhere until Cid repairs the boat, and if there’s a chance that Noct can acquire another Royal Arm, we should take it.”

“Yes!” Talcott cheered, but immediately wilted again when Gladio dropped his chair back to all fours and fixed him with a sharp look.

“You said dangerous,” Gladio said. “Your grandpa’s notes say anything about what kinds of nasties we’ll see? Anything more specific than ‘monsters and daemons’?”

“I’ll look,” Talcott said immediately, and leapt off the chair to run upstairs, where he kept Jared’s journals.

“As long as it’s not bugs,” Prompto said with an exaggerated shudder. “I _hate_ bugs.”

*             *             *

Of course it was bugs.

It took them four days to find the staircase hidden at the far northeast corner of Ravatogh’s volcanic foothills, and much of that time had been spent fighting their way through swarms of giant wasps and the occasional clutch of royalisks, kingatrices, and their chicks. They’d spotted a few terrifying tentacled monstrosities as well, but had managed to avoid those.

The Regalia had only gotten them as far as Verinas Mart east of the Rock of Ravatogh, itself a full day’s drive from Cape Caem. After that, it had been another long day of clambering over the massive rocks of Ravatogh’s foothills to reach the area marked in Jared’s notebook, long enough that even Gladio had stopped making fun of Prompto for complaining. At least there was a haven up here, though Noctis couldn’t imagine why some long-dead Oracle had made the trek out to this hellscape to create it. The haven gave them a base of operations to search from, as well as a safe place to spend the nights. Not that any of them got much sleep, lying in the tent with hands on weapons as they listened to groups - _groups!_ \- of red giants stomp past. Costlemark had been bad, but this was ridiculous.

It was a huge relief when, on their second day of searching, Noctis spotted the old path cut through the rock. They’d just finished killing yet more wasps, a rough fight that had left Prompto nauseous from several venom-filled stings, Gladio dizzy from being knocked headfirst off a high rock, and Noctis with a broken arm after a wasp had tried to fly away with him and he hadn’t been able to warp safely to the ground.

“We can’t stay here,” Ignis said uneasily as he helped Prompto to his feet and handed him a bottle of antidote. “We should retreat to the haven, tend our wounds, and try again tomorrow.”

“Haven’s pretty far,” Gladio said. “Better to see if there’s somewhere nearby we can hole up.”

“Over there,” Noct suggested, pointing at a gap in the rocky wall that surrounded them. “Wasps don’t like confined spaces, and I don’t think a kingatrice could fit in there.”

“Agreed,” Ignis said, and motioned for Noctis to lead the way.

The path was longer than Noctis had thought, curving into the cliff as it sloped sharply upward. The ground under their feet had odd tracks in it, like water had run down it at some point, and maybe the thing turned into a sluiceway when it rained. Noct followed it around, moving slowly in case it opened into a monster den, and definitely not because he was exhausted from fighting all day. Then stopped abruptly when he came around the final curve and spotted a blocky stone building jutting up over the rocks ahead.

“Whoa,” Prompto said behind him. “Think that’s it? Pitioss?”

“Hard to say, what with the abundance of long-lost ruins littering the place,” Ignis said dryly. Prompto rolled his eyes.

Noct ignored them and started walking again, his exhaustion fading beneath the excitement of having finally reached their goal. The path widened as it approached the building, finally ending at the base of a crumbling staircase, its stones bleached and pitted from centuries of harsh sunlight and littered with rocky debris. The staircase stretched up to a long landing or terrace made of the same flat square marble blocks as the stairs and the walls of the building high above. A fence made of twenty-foot-tall hexagonal iron rods, brown with rust and as thick as Noctis’s thigh, surrounded the landing. Another, smaller set of stairs led from the landing up to a crumbling ledge around the base of the building, also surrounded by the towering rods.

Noctis led the way up the first set of steps, then collapsed onto the second stairwell, stretching out his injured arm and reaching into the Armiger for the energy drinks he’d infused with healing magic. He drank one, wincing as its magic stitched the bones in his arm back together, then tossed a second one to Gladio when his Shield came back from a quick circuit of the landing to check for lurking monsters. Gladio chugged it, then dropped down to sit against the fence opposite Noctis, stretching his legs and rolling his shoulders tiredly.  

“You should have let me set that first,” Ignis said. He sat next to Noctis on the stairs, taking Noct’s arm and examining it critically.

Noct waved his free hand. “The magic works, Iggy, it’s fine.”

“Nevertheless,” Ignis said. Apparently satisfied, he released Noct’s arm and stood, crossing the landing to check the lump on Gladio’s head despite Gladio’s attempts to swat him away.

“So,” Prompto said, plopping down in the spot Ignis had vacated, “this is the big scary ruin that no one’s been able to get into?”

“Looks like,” Noct agreed. “Not gonna chicken out now, are you?”

“And stay out here with the wasps and the kingatrices and those tentacle things? No way!”

Noct grinned. “Might be daemons inside.”

“There’s _definitely_ daemons out here,” Prompto pointed out. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, buddy.”

“Guess not.” Noctis sprawled back on the stairs. The weird fence provided just enough shade that he almost felt cool, which after the stifling heat of the volcano’s foothills was kind of a novelty. “Think this place is like Costlemark and Steyliff?”

“You mean, it only opens at night?” Ignis asked. He finally quit fussing over Gladio and sat down on the ground next to him, the weary set of his shoulders the only indication that he was as exhausted as the rest of them. “Possibly, though if the answer were that simple, I suspect past explorers would have figured it out. The architectural style of this entire structure is quite different from either Costlemark or Steyliff, so it could be from a different era, or even a different culture entirely.”

“Different culture?” Prompto repeated. “You mean, other than Solheim?”

“Hard to say,” Ignis said. “We’ve too few records from their time to know for sure.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Gladio said. He tilted his head back against the fence and closed his eyes, clearly intending to take a nap.

Which sounded like a good idea to Noct. He shifted on the steps, tucking his arms behind his head. “Yeah. Someone wake me up when it’s sunset.”

*             *             *

Ignis woke him a full hour before sunset, much to Noct’s disappointment, but Ignis pointed out that they still needed to scout the building itself - beyond just the landing they’d rested on - and it would be considerably easier to do so while there was still daylight. Which was a fair and reasonable point, so Noctis only grumbled a little as he got to his feet. The long nap had left him feeling refreshed, and he took a moment to stretch the kinks from his back before heading up the second set of stairs to the crumbling ledge.

The pitted marble blocks that made up the outer wall of Pitioss’s main structure stretched high over Noctis’s head here, two or three stories up at least. Noctis ran his hands over the wall, feeling the warmth baked into the stones from the sun, as well as a trace of magic that tingled from his fingertips to his elbows. It was nothing like the quiet dying thrum of Steyliff, nor the restless throbbing of Costlemark - this magic felt hot and cold all at once, lonely and foreign and achingly familiar.

Noctis pulled his hands away from the wall and rubbed his palms together, shivering despite the lingering heat of the day. Prompto, who’d come up behind him to poke at the wall as well, gave him a concerned look. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Noctis answered. “Just… feels strange.”

“Ominous,” Ignis said. He stood below them, in the gap between the blocks supporting the staircase on which Noctis and Prompto stood, and the blocks supporting the rest of the ledge where it wrapped around the side of the building. His gloved hands ran lightly over the stone, probably looking for seams or gaps that might indicate a mechanism.

Why he was doing that down there, when there was a ledge that probably went to a real entrance just a few feet away, Noctis had no idea. “I’m gonna check over there,” he said, and leaped across the gap without waiting for a response.

The setting sun cast thick bars of light through the iron rods surrounding the ledge on this side, and Noctis had to squint against their glare as he studied the ledge. He’d been right - it wrapped around the west side of the building and stretched inward at the far end. He followed it around, noting as he went that a single narrow opening broke the smooth wall on this side of the structure, maybe ten or twelve feet overhead. If the lower blocks weren’t so smoothly joined, he’d have considered trying to climb up to it. Maybe Gladio could boost him up there, if they couldn’t find any other way in.

The ledge ended in a wider platform that might once have been some kind of smallish terrace or elevated courtyard, surrounded on three sides by more towering marble-block walls. Twin pillars, made of a yellow stone that was the first deviation from the ancient marble he’d seen yet, flanked the terrace, and more of those hexagonal rods marched in a line between them, blocking off the back part of the terrace. A couple of the rods were broken off a foot or so above the ground, leaving just enough of a gap that Noctis could slip through. And past them…

“Bingo,” Noctis muttered under his breath. A large black metal disc, engraved with the distinctive gold markings he recognized from both Steyliff and Costlemark, sat in the middle of the back wall of the terrace.

Noctis turned around to point out his find to his friends - and froze. None of them were anywhere in sight, and usually he could hardly shake them long enough to take a piss. Now that he was paying attention, the whole area was oddly quiet; even the distant screeching of the regaltrice chicks had gone silent.

Unease crawled from his gut up to his throat, and he hurried back along the ledge to the place where it jutted out over the landing they’d rested on. His friends weren’t there, either - they’d vanished as completely as if the ground had swallowed them.

“What the hell?” Noctis whispered, then, louder, “Guys? Ignis? Gladio? Prompto? _Guys!_ ”

Silence answered him.

_Dammit._ Something must have happened to them, but he had no idea what, or how - they’d been fine just a minute ago when he’d jumped from the top of the stairs over to this ledge, and the area was small enough that he’d have heard anything attacking them. Calling his sword to his hand, Noctis leaped back over the gap to the top of the stairs—

—and nearly impaled Ignis, who stood on the stairs gesturing in frustration to Gladio below.

Noctis barely managed to dismiss the sword in time, and ended up crashing bodily into his chamberlain. Gladio shouted his name as Noct and Ignis went over backward, slamming into the wall on the other side of the stairs in a jumble. From somewhere past the other end of the lower landing, Prompto shouted, too, but Noct barely heard them as Ignis grabbed him by the shoulders, which for Ignis was a shocking breach of propriety.

“Noct!” Ignis exclaimed, and Noctis heard the barely-restrained panic in his voice. “Where _were_ you?”

“Uh, right on that ledge,” Noctis answered, gesturing behind him. “Where the hell were you guys?”

“Ledge?” Ignis repeated, and blinked. “What ledge?”

“And what do you mean, where the hell were we?” Gladio added from below. His voice was more gravelly than usual - he’d been halfway to panic too.

Noctis frowned at them, but Ignis’s face was perfectly serious, and Gladio looked just this side of furious. “You guys vanished,” Noct said. “I couldn’t—”  

“ _What_ ledge, Noct?” Ignis repeated.

Noct turned all the way around and pointed at the ledge he’d just jumped from, a few feet over Gladio’s head where he stood on a pile of debris. “That ledge. Right there.”

Gladio stared at him. “Noct, that’s a wall.”

“What?”

Gladio jumped, stretching up an arm, and slapped his palm against what looked to Noct like open air about six inches above the ledge. “A wall. Things made of stone, meant to keep people out, usually you can’t go _jumping straight through them?_ ”

“Hold on a sec,” Prompto said. He’d come up the lower set of stairs and crossed the landing to stand beside Gladio, gaze flicking between Noct and the ledge thoughtfully. “Noct, what exactly do you see?”

“A ledge,” Noctis said again. “It’s…” He gestured helplessly, frustrated. “Just like this one we’re standing on, except… over there, and with those rods around its edges. It goes around the side of the building to the entrance. I think it’s the entrance; there’s one of those big push plates like at Costlemark.”

“But all we see is a stone wall,” Prompto said. “Lined with those rods.” He spun to face Gladio. “Hey, big guy, gimme a boost?”

Gladio’s brow furrowed, then he seemed to get it. He braced his back against the wall under the ledge and cupped his hands into a stirrup. Prompto put one foot in his hands, and Gladio lifted him up until Prompto could stand on his shoulders, his palms pressed flat against what probably, to him, looked and felt like a solid wall. But as far as Noct could see, Prompto was bracing himself against the empty air just above the ledge.

“That’s so weird,” Noctis said, shaking his head. “You look like a mime.”

Prompto grinned at him over his shoulder. “I wish I could see that. But yeah, this is solid for us.” He thumped a fist against it for emphasis, which sent him wobbling precariously, and Gladio grabbed him by the legs. When Prompto was steady again he added, “But it’s not solid for you, Noct.”

“Odd,” Ignis murmured. “And you asked where we had gone. You couldn’t see us from within the wall?”

“Nope,” Noctis said. “I could see this whole area, but not you guys.”

“Go through again and see if you can see me here,” Prompto suggested.

“You’re in his way,” Gladio said dryly, “and if I move you’re going to fall.”

“It’s fine,” Noct said. “Prompto, hold still.”

“Uh,” Prompto said. Noct didn’t give him a chance to say anything else, calling a dagger to his hand and flinging it over Prompto’s head to stick in the iron fence at the far side of the ledge. He warped to it, grinning as Prompto yelped and Gladio snarled at him to _hold sti—_

Silence. The moment Noctis crossed the wall only his friends could see, they vanished and that eerie quiet took hold. Noct pulled the dagger loose and dropped to the ledge, staring at the empty space where he _knew_ Prompto stood. But though he could see the stairs he’d just warped from, could see the pitted stone wall beyond it, could even see through the bars of the fence to the big landing below and the staircase at its far end, he couldn’t see his friends.

He warped back to the stairs, flinging the dagger high up enough that he wouldn’t hit either Prompto or Ignis. When he crossed the invisible wall, sound rushed back: Prompto yelling as he toppled off Gladio’s shoulders, Gladio snarling as he tried to catch him, Ignis scolding both of them to be careful. Noct dismissed the dagger and dropped to the stairs beside Ignis while Gladio and Prompto sorted themselves out.

When Prompto was on his own two feet again and Gladio had finished making a show of dusting boot prints from his shoulders, Noctis said, “Nothing. As soon as I go over there, it’s like you guys stop existing.”

“Eurgh,” Prompto said, and shuddered. “That’s creepy.”

“Tell me about it,” Noctis agreed.

“Next question is, _why_?” Gladio said. “Why can you go in but not us?”

“Think it’s because he’s a Lucis Caelum?” Prompto asked. “Just like a video game - only the hero can enter the magic dungeon.”

“You sayin’ the rest of us ain’t heroes?” Gladio mock-growled.

“I’m saying he’s the only one of us with royal blood, and royal magic,” Prompto said.

“That is the most likely explanation,” Ignis admitted. “Though I can’t imagine _why_ it would be so. What use could anyone have for a structure which only those of the royal line can enter?”

“Royal treasure!” Prompto crowed.

“Or a Royal Tomb,” Noctis said.

“Try a royal pain in the ass,” Gladio grumbled. “This place gives me the creeps. I don’t like it.”

“So… what now?” Prompto asked. “If we can’t go in there…”

“Then I go,” Noctis said.

“ _No_ ,” Ignis and Gladio said simultaneously. Gladio tilted his head to Ignis, giving him the floor, and Ignis continued, “It’s much too dangerous. We’ve no idea what’s in there. Steyliff was an effort even with three of us and Aranea. Costlemark nearly got us killed more times than I like to think about. If this place is anything like either of them—”

“I don’t think it is,” Noctis interrupted. “It feels… _different_.”

“That doesn’t mean _less dangerous_ ,” Ignis snapped.

“What if there’s a Royal Arm in there?” Noctis said.

“Then it stays in there,” Gladio said. “It ain’t worth it, Noct. Whatever’s in there, someone went to a lot of trouble to keep everybody out.”

“Everybody except me,” Noctis shot back. “If there’s a Royal Arm in there, I need to find it. Even if there’s not, if there’s something else important to the Lucis Caelums, it’s worth a look.”

“Noct—” Ignis started.

“One day,” Noctis said. “Just give me one day to go in there and poke around. If I run into anything I can’t handle, I’ll come right back out.”

Ignis pressed his lips together, but sighed. “Until morning,” he said. “Eight hours. More than enough time to get the lay of the place and determine if anything in there is worth pursuing.”

Noctis decided not to point out that they hadn’t known about the Royal Arm held by the jabberwock at the bottom of Costlemark until after they’d killed it. Ignis was giving him eight hours; he’d take what he could get. “Until morning,” he agreed.

Gladio blew out an aggravated sigh, but didn’t argue. Ignis nodded. “Do you still have that watch?”

“Uh…” Noctis hesitated, mentally rifling through the Armiger until he found the watch Ignis had given him last year in a futile attempt to get him to show up to meetings on time. It was a fancy thing with little embedded faces for the day, month, and year, and it gleamed when Noct materialized it to his hand. “Yeah.”

Ignis took it from him and checked that the date and time were set correctly before handing it back. “No more than eight hours, Noct,” he said. “We can’t go in there after you, so you have to come back. Do you understand?”

Translation: Iggy was worried as hell, and was only agreeing to this because he knew as well as Noctis did that he couldn’t actually stop Noct from jumping through that invisible wall. But he didn’t like it one bit.

Neither did Gladio, if his crossed arms and stony expression were any hint, but he only said, “Be careful in there.”

“Take too long and I’ll beat that lava boss in _King’s Knight_ without you,” Prompto added.

They were _all_ worried as hell. Noctis almost felt bad pushing the issue, but if this place was somehow reserved for the Lucis Caelum line - or even just the Chosen King, which had occurred to him if not the others - then he had to see what was inside.

“Yeah,” Noctis said to all of them. “See you in the morning.”

He leaped across the ledge, and silence fell around him once more.

*             *             *

Between the exploration and subsequent debate, they’d used up most of the hour before sunset, and Noctis didn’t have to wait long before the last of the sun’s rays dropped below the horizon. The black-and-gold disc hummed to life, its gold inlay flaring with light. Noct could feel the thrum of magic in his bones as he stretched out a hand to touch the disc.

He’d spent enough time in Costlemark to not be surprised when the entire floor of the terrace began to sink rapidly downward. Noctis flicked on his jacket light and braced himself, ready to summon a weapon to hand if any daemons materialized in the sudden underground darkness. But no daemons had appeared by the time the platform slowed to a smooth halt at the entrance to a low-ceilinged hallway.

What _had_ appeared were a pair of square pillars that took up the entire width of the hallway, moving rhythmically up and down like pistons, their undersides lined with viciously-sharp spikes whose tips glowed molten red.

_That’s new_ , Noctis thought. He hurried beneath them as they rose up, feeling the heat of the spikes even from a few feet away. On the other side was a wall with a narrow, sloped passage in the center, and a bizarre reddish cloud of solid magic in the corner. Noctis eyed the cloud of magic before deciding not to touch it, and headed up the narrow passage instead.

The vast room beyond was… not at all what he was expecting. A couple of spotlights provided eerie, shadow-filled illumination, though where they were getting power from, Noctis had no idea. One spotlight shone through the bars of a massive cage to highlight a bronze statue of a crouching horned man that looked almost like some of the older depictions of Ifrit. Another spotlight lit an immense marble statue of a bearded man rising up from somewhere under the floor, one arm stretched out toward a tall black-and-gold doorway opposite Noctis. The floor around his waist had crumbled away, leaving nothing but gaping darkness in half the room.

The other half of the room at least had a solid floor, but the architecture of the place was beyond bizarre. A massive stone block some twenty feet square slid in and out of the right wall, rhythmic just like the spiked pillars behind Noctis. Sloped walls supported cages made of those hexagonal iron rods, and broken iron girders jutted out from the walls at odd angles. Ledges that went nowhere, pillars floating in midair, even a couple of giant metal balls set into recesses in the walls.  Clusters of glowing blue… somethings fluttered through the upper reaches of the room, bright and out of place in the dim room. Reddish liquid streaked garish lines along the floor and the walls like - it couldn’t be blood, could it? Stone didn’t bleed, it had to be rust stains. Definitely rust stains.

“Weird,” Noct said aloud. His voice echoed strangely in the massive chamber, bouncing back to him before falling away into the darkness of the pit on the room’s left side, and he suppressed a shudder.

But he only had eight hours to explore this place, so he took a deep breath, jumped down onto the ledge beneath him, and got to work.

*             *             *

The first time Noctis fell was in a side chamber on the other side of the moving block. He’d leaped from a staircase to the top of a narrow pillar in an attempt to reach another of those glowing black and gold discs, and came up short. He grabbed wildly for the pillar, but like many of the surfaces in this place, it was covered in that slick reddish stuff that definitely - probably - maybe wasn’t blood. His fingers slipped and he skidded down the pillar and past its end, into the vast black depths beyond. He had a moment to think, _Ignis is gonna kill me if I fall to my death in here_ , and then—

A throb of sound and power in his bones, red magic glittering around him, and he was suddenly standing back on the staircase he’d jumped from.

_What the…_

Noctis froze, staring, trying to process what had just happened. He’d jumped, missed, his fingers slipping in the red fluid, and now he was… back here? And the red stuff was gone from his hands.

_Maybe I’m losing it_ , he thought. This place was beyond strange, and maybe he’d just… imagined the fall. Yeah, that was probably it. He’d just been picturing the jump in his head, and an overactive imagination fueled by years of video games had provided an incredibly vivid mental image of what would happen if he fell.

That _had_ to be it. He just needed to get his head in the game, as Gladio liked to tell him. He rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the phantom sensation of falling that still roiled through his gut. He checked his watch, too, making sure that he was still good on time. Even if he had somehow not just fallen to his death, Ignis would kill him if he was so much as a minute over his alloted eight hours. But the watch read ten PM on the nose, the second hand ticking over the 12 as he watched. He’d been in here just over half an hour.

_Half an hour and I’m already going nuts_ , he thought, and snorted. _All right, let’s do this._ Noctis steeled himself, firmly pictured himself _successfully_ landing the jump, and leaped across the gap. This time he made it, though his heart pounded in his chest loud enough that he was surprised it didn’t echo through the room. The disc he was after was one more long leap away, and he took a deep breath, jumped—

—and missed again, several feet short this time, and he flailed wildly as he fell, searching for anywhere to warp to, any way to stop his fall—

Thrum.

Red magic glittered in the air around him. He was back on the staircase.

_What. The. Hell._

Noctis stared at the pillar in front of him, the one he’d leaped to and then off again. One trick of the imagination he could buy, but twice in a row was beyond unlikely. Especially since the image in his head of what the view looked like from the other side of the pillar was too clear to _not_ be real.

_It’s like a video game,_ he thought. _I’m dying and respawning. But… how?!_

He closed his eyes, trying to recall the feeling of the red-tinged magic that had surrounded him when he’d landed back on the stairs. It felt strange, yes, but also oddly familiar, just like everything about this place. Alien and bizarre, made up of familiar materials set in unfamiliar shapes. The magic was the same, almost like his own royal magic but different in ways he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Finally he sighed and opened his eyes again. Maybe he’d recognize it eventually, but for now he was burning those precious eight hours Ignis had given him. He hadn’t even made it through the big door in the main room yet, and there were three more doors in this side room that needed exploring, as well. Noctis glanced at his watch on reflex, making sure he hadn’t lost too much time trying to figure out the weird magic—

The watch read ten PM on the nose, the second hand just ticking over the 12.

Noct tapped the watch, lifted it to his ear and listened to it tick. It wasn’t stuck, it was working just fine, but it had been ten PM a full minute ago, and... And then abruptly he remembered Steyliff, and the bridges that crumbled down to piles of debris on the floor, then reversed themselves to solid stone once more.

Time magic. That _had_ to be it. Somehow, when he fell down into the black depths below, time was reversing to put him back on safe footing.

_O-kay_. That was weird, but honestly not that much weirder than those walkways in Steyliff, and definitely not weirder than the rest of Pitioss. Maybe whoever’d built this place had wanted to make sure the kings and queens it was intended for couldn’t die here, even if they did have to jump and climb all over the place. Looking at it that way, it almost made sense - it wouldn’t do for a particularly clumsy Lucis Caelum to end the line prematurely because they’d slipped on a staircase.

That didn’t answer the question of who’d built Pitioss to be such a complicated disaster in the first place, but maybe Noctis would find more clues to the builder’s identity further in. It was reassuring, at least, to know that he wouldn’t die if he screwed up.

_You don’t know that_ , Ignis’s voice warned sternly in his head. _You can’t bet your life on the continued operation of this time reversal. Be_ careful _, Noct._

Noctis smirked at his imagined chamberlain as he lined up to jump back to the pillar. _I’ll be fine, Iggy. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this place._

*             *             *

By the time he got the central chamber’s door open and saw the house-sized wooden ball rotating ponderously on the other side, he’d fallen and time-skipped backward so many times that he barely noticed anymore. It was just like a video game - try, fail, reset, try again. He’d found out the hard way that so much as brushing the red-hot spikes that studded the place _also_ sent him skipping backward in time, but he supposed that was better than finding out the hard way what it felt like to be impaled on them.

At least there were no daemons. Noctis wasn’t sure if the magic that permeated Pitioss kept them out, or if they just didn’t bother since there wasn’t anyone or anything in here they could maul or eat. Whatever the reason, it was nice not to have to worry about watching his back. Pitioss was hard enough to navigate without daemons popping up under his feet as he leaped from moving block to narrow ledge to rotating platform to spinning pillar of spikes.

The ride up to the top of the rotating ball, and subsequent jump down through a narrow gap surrounded by spikes, took him more tries than he wanted to admit, but by the time he landed it, he felt like could handle anything Pitioss threw at him.

One hour, fifteen minutes down.

*             *             *

An hour later, Noctis still hadn’t found anything that looked like a Royal Tomb, but he _had_ found several ornate treasure chests full of jewelry and weapons, as well as tons of valuable stuff just lying among the debris that littered the entire place. Rare old coins - including a bunch of Oracle Ascension coins so old he didn’t recognize the date system used to mark them - more jewelry, and even some delicate filigreed vials that a brush of his own magic told him were some kind of ancient Lucis Caelum healing salve.

He still hoped there was a Royal Arm buried somewhere in here, but if there wasn’t, at least he’d have _something_ useful to show for his efforts.

*             *             *

Three hours in, he was deep in the bowels of Pitioss’s lower levels, and the entire Astrals-damned structure was rotating around him while the statue of a woman the size of the freaking Archaeon watched him impassively.

Maybe he should’ve listened to Ignis and Gladio and never set foot in this stupid place.

*             *             *

An hour later, he’d knocked - _Noct, heh heh_ \- down the statue of the woman, climbed up past yet another freaky bronze not-quite-Ifrit, and made it back to the central chamber. There was one part of the room he had yet to get to, but he was pretty sure he could reach it by climbing along the broken girders that jutted out over the moving blocks and lined the walls of the side chamber. Then he’d have explored every last inch of this bizarre pile of uneven walls and moving stones, and could head back up to the surface, where geometry made sense and the world didn’t rotate out from under your feet.

_Cake, baby_.

It took Noctis another half hour or so to actually get up to the top of the room, trigger the last disc, and climb around the girder maze. Then it was just a matter of gathering up the valuables scattered among the debris on the staircase beyond, and making his way up to a room that was nearly identical to the shaft he’d entered through. Yet another glowing black-and-gold disc sat in the middle of the back wall; when he pressed it, the floor under his feet began to rise rapidly.

He checked his watch as he waited for the lift to stop: 2:08 AM, just over four and a half hours since he’d entered. _Awesome._ He hadn’t found a Royal Arm, but he _had_ collected a bunch of stuff that they could use or sell, and Iggy would probably geek out in his quiet Iggy way over the old Oracle Ascension coins and their historical significance.

He realized abruptly that the shaft around him was growing brighter, and he squinted against the light as the lift came to a smooth halt. Sunlight streamed through a gap in the stone wall in front of him - except he’d only been in there four and a half hours. It was still the middle of the night. Why was the sun shining?

Noctis frowned, checking the watch again, but it still showed 2:08 AM. Unease settled in his stomach, and he hurried forward into the gap. He nearly tripped over the pile of black cloth that lay in a heap on the floor; he scooped it up without paying much attention and stuffed it into a pocket.

Standing at the opening in the wall, Noctis stared out over Ravatogh’s foothills, the volcanic stone gleaming in the sunlight. This was the gap he’d noticed when he’d first walked around the outside of Pitioss, the gap he’d thought Gladio could boost him up to. He was back at the surface, above the broken ledge with the invisible wall that kept his friends from following him inside.

He couldn’t hear them, but he hadn’t been able to hear them before either. The deathly quiet seemed to be a side effect of whatever magic kept anyone but the royal line out of this place. Maybe the sunlight was another side effect. He hadn’t been able to see his friends once he’d crossed the invisible wall; maybe the magic made it look like the sun was still shining. Except he’d seen the sun set - had needed the sun to set in order to activate the disc that opened the way in.

Maybe the sun had just... risen early.

_Really early. Sure._

Noctis glanced over his shoulder at the shaft, but there was nothing in there except featureless stone walls. He’d cleaned out every corner of Pitioss; there was no reason to hang around. And he needed to find out why the sun was shining at two in the morning.

He swung down from the opening, landing on the ledge that ran along the western wall of Pitioss with a grunt. His legs ached from his toes to his hips, and even the old scar on his back from the Marilith burned dully. He’d been doing nothing but running and jumping and climbing for the last four and a half hours, and out here in the sunlight, he was suddenly a lot more exhausted than he’d thought. He was looking forward to collapsing back at the haven.

One last jump, out from the invisible wall and across the gap in the ledge to the top of the second staircase. Noctis turned, expecting to see his friends dozing around the big landing below - but the whole area was empty. It was quiet, too, except for the faint distant screeching of a regaltrice chick. He hurried down the stairs to the landing, craning his neck to check around the base of the staircase, but Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto were nowhere in sight.

He had his mouth open to call for them when a voice all but shrieked, _“Noct!!!”_ He turned to the lower staircase in time to see Prompto barreling up it, Ignis and Gladio hot on his heels - then Prompto reached the top and launched himself across the landing to crash into Noctis. Noct barely managed to keep them both from toppling over backward, helped a moment later by Gladio grabbing him by the back of his jacket, and Ignis reaching around Prompto to clutch Noct’s shoulders.

Prompto himself clung to Noct like he was drowning, and sure the guy was skinny but Noct could feel his ribs creaking. “Need… to breathe…” he managed, and Prompto’s grip loosened, but only a little. Noct looked up to Ignis for help—

—and froze, because Ignis had _beard stubble._

Noctis hadn’t thought Ignis could even grow a beard, but here he was with his chin covered in a five o’clock shadow to rival Gladio’s. Then Noct realized that Ignis’s eyes were sunken, with bags under them so deep he looked like he’d taken an iron giant’s fist to the face, and his hair stuck up wildly as if he’d been running his hands through it nonstop for days.

Ignis said, “You’re alive. Thank the Astrals,” and sat down abruptly on the ground.

Noct squirmed in Prompto’s grip until he could stare down at Ignis, then up at Gladio, who still stood over them, his hand knotted in the back of Noctis’s jacket. He, too, looked like he hadn’t slept in days, his face stony in the way that meant he was really, really pissed. Noct fought the urge to shrink back and hide behind Prompto - he remembered that look from when they were kids and he’d told Gladio he’d been the one to lead Iris out of the palace into the rain. “Guys?” Noct said. His voice came out smaller than he’d meant, but they were really scaring him.

“Iggy told you eight hours,” Gladio snarled through teeth gritted so hard Noct could hear them grinding. “It’s been _eight days,_ Noct.”

For a bizarre moment, Noctis felt like the ground under his feet had dropped away and he was plunging back into Pitioss’s lightless depths again. He hooked an arm around Prompto, steadying himself; Prompto sniffled and buried his face deeper into Noct’s neck. Noct whispered, “ _What?!_ ”

“Eight days, seven hours, and thirteen minutes,” Ignis said. His voice was very carefully steady. “We couldn’t get in there to see if you were— if you needed help. We tried.” He bit off the last word as if he couldn’t allow himself to say anything else.

Noct stared at them again, not quite able to believe what he’d heard. Except both Iggy and Gladio really did look like they’d spent eight days frantic and sleepless, and Prompto still hadn’t let go of him. “But it was only a few hours,” Noct managed finally. “I was— I _watched_ , I was careful, Iggy, Gladio, I swear by all the Astrals it was only four and a half hours.” He held out his wrist with the watch still on it.

Ignis reached up and grabbed his wrist, staring at the watch as if it had betrayed him. His mouth moved a few times but he didn’t manage to get any words out. Finally Gladio snatched Noctis’s wrist out of Iggy’s grip and glared at the watch himself before letting go with an angry grunt. “ _Dammit_ ,” he snarled, and released Noct’s jacket to storm away to the other side of the landing. If the walls had been anything other than rough stone and rusted iron, Noct was pretty sure Gladio would have punched one; as it was, his knuckles were scraped and bruised like he’d tried it already.

_Dammit_ was putting it mildly. Noctis gently detached Prompto - who immediately grabbed onto his sleeve instead - and crouched down next to Ignis. His chamberlain sat on the landing like a puppet whose strings had been cut, as if whatever frantic energy had driven him for the last four hours - no, the last _eight days_ \- had given out completely. Noct rested a hand on his shoulder and met his eyes. “I’m sorry, Iggy,” he said. “I swear I… I had no idea. It only felt like a few hours, I didn’t even get sleepy. I thought—” He shook his head, frustrated and furious at himself for scaring them this badly. “Damn it. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Ignis said quietly. “I suppose if your watch was running normally, you’d have had no reason to believe anything was amiss.”

Noctis winced. His watch hadn’t exactly been running normally - it had been reset back in time every time Noct had, and it had never once occurred to him that the time shift might only apply to Noct himself inside Pitioss, and not the rest of the world - not to Ignis and Gladio and Prompto, trapped outside and terrified he was dead. He’d lost track of how many times he’d reset within the first hour or so; it was no wonder he’d lost so much time along with it.

He’d really fucked up.

“ _Damn_ it,” he whispered. “Iggy, Prompto, Gladio—” looking at each of them in turn as he spoke— “I’m sorry. I didn’t…” He shook his head again helplessly, unable to find the words to apologize properly for letting them think he was dead for over a week.

“It’s okay, Noct,” Prompto said. His voice cracked and his cheeks were smudged with tears, but he managed to smile at Noctis. “You’re alive, and you’re here. That’s all that matters.”

Ignis nodded. “Indeed.” He took a deep breath, then braced his hands against the ground and pushed himself to his feet. His movements weren’t as elegant as usual, but he looked less frantic than before. “Let’s return to the haven. I should very much like to get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Noct agreed. He stood up as well, his knees popping. Prompto was still hovering close, so Noctis thumped him lightly on the shoulder. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Prompto said, and nodded. The way he bit his lower lip suggested otherwise, but then he smiled at Noct and gave him a shove in return.

Noct looked across the landing to where Gladio still stood glaring up at the walls of Pitioss. “Gladio?”

His Shield grunted, but finally turned and joined them as they followed Ignis down the lower staircase. They walked along the curving path through the rock in silence, Prompto sticking a little too close to Noctis, Ignis keeping his head turned just enough to watch Noctis in his peripheral vision. Gladio stayed behind them, and when Noct glanced back to check on him, his hands kept clenching and unclenching into white-knuckled fists.

Eight days with nothing to do but worry and wait had apparently translated into the guys clearing out half the monsters in Ravatogh’s foothills. The walk back to the haven was almost uneventful, except for having to dodge a pair of those tentacle-mouth-plant things. Their camp was still set up, and Noctis immediately dropped into a chair and kicked his aching legs out with a groan of relief.

Gladio rolled his eyes and stomped off to stand at the far side of the haven, arms crossed, his tattoo rippling under his shirt like real feathers as his muscles bunched and flexed. Noct knew it would be a while before Gladio deigned to talk to him again. Gladio processed exactly one emotion, anger, and eight straight days of it would’ve left him wound tight enough to take down a bandersnatch single-handedly.

“I’ll get lunch started,” Ignis said. He crossed to the camp stove and began pulling out dishes. Noctis considered ordering him to take a nap first, but Iggy was still moving a little too brusquely, and Noct decided to let him fuss for a bit. It was Noctis’s fault he was so upset; the least Noct could do was let him work through it by cooking.

Prompto sprawled on the stone at Noctis’s feet, leaning back against Noct’s legs. “So… what was it like in there?” he asked. He’d gotten himself under control during the walk back, the only sign of his earlier tears a slight redness around his eyes. He tilted his head back on Noctis’s knees to look at him. “Were there daemons? Did you find a Royal Arm? Any cool treasure? Royal history? Ancient guardians waiting around for the Chosen One? Tell us everything!”

“I will if you’ll let me,” Noct teased, and Prompto grinned. “No daemons,” Noctis continued. “And no Royal Arm, either.”

Prompto groaned. “Really? All that and not even something to show for it?” On the other side of the haven, Gladio growled and shook his head.

“No Royal Arm,” Noct corrected. He rifled through the Armiger and pulled out a couple bracelets he’d found that he thought Prompto would like. “But I did find some neat stuff.”

“Ooh! Shiny.” Prompto held the bracelets up to the sun, letting the light sparkle off the gems.

“And magical,” Noctis said.

“Like the stuff Dino makes?”

“Yup.”

“Sweet!” Prompto crowed, and began hooking them around his wrists.

“There’s a bunch more that we can sell,” Noctis said. He pulled out the old Oracle Ascension coins next. “Iggy, thought you might like these.”

Ignis set down his cooking and came over to take the coins from Noctis’s hand. He frowned at them, then his eyebrows shot up. “Fascinating,” he murmured. “That’s the old Tenebrae calendar, if memory serves. These must be almost a thousand years old.”

“Really?” Prompto leaned over to peer at the coins. “Cool.”

“I’ve heard there’s a market in Altissia for such coins,” Ignis said. He tucked them into a pocket and headed back to the stove, where one of the pans was beginning to hiss and steam. “When we get there, we can try to find a buyer.”

“Good plan,” Noctis agreed.

A tug at his pocket had him looking down at Prompto, who’d pulled out the bundle of black cloth Noct had picked up on his way out of Pitioss. “What’s this?” Prompto asked.

“Dunno,” Noct said. “Found it on my way out.”

Prompto shook it out and held it up, revealing a hood made of soft black leather. Noctis ran a hand over it, and was surprised to find that it tingled with magic. It felt like motion, like the space between spaces where Noctis went when he warped. “This is definitely Lucis Caelum stuff,” he said. “I’ll have to try it out later.”

“Yeah,” Prompto agreed. He eyed the hood and then Noctis, head tilted like he was framing a shot. “You’re gonna look dorky as hell, though.”

“I’m sure it was the height of fashion in the early days of the Kingdom of Lucis,” Ignis said dryly, and Prompto snickered.

Noctis ignored them, shuffling through the Armiger again until he pulled out a pair of sturdy leather gloves. He’d found them wedged into a crevice on the giant statue at the bottom of Pitioss, and they were embroidered with designs that reminded him of the elegant sword Gladio had brought back from the Trial of Gilgamesh. “Hey, Gladio—”

“You don’t have to bribe me with shiny trinkets,” Gladio said without turning.

“I’m not—” Noctis protested, but Gladio interrupted him.

“Sure you’re not.” He did turn around then, a crooked smile softening his words.  

And, okay, yeah, maybe Noctis _was_ trying to bribe them, just a little. He hated disappointing his friends, hated even more that he’d scared them so badly. Even if he hadn’t found a Royal Arm, he wanted to prove to them that they hadn’t suffered a week of terror for nothing. But he didn’t know how to say any of that, so he didn’t say anything.

Gladio didn’t seem to be expecting a response, anyway. “I just… want you to promise me something,” he continued. He uncrossed his arms and moved closer, a quiet urgency in the set of his shoulders, in his eyes as he met Noctis’s gaze. “Promise me you won’t go disappearing like that again.”

It was a stupid promise to make, and Noct knew Gladio knew it. They still had to get to Altissia, and Noctis still had four more gods’ covenants to win, and then they’d have to take on the entire Niflheim Empire to get Insomnia back. Anything could happen. But Prompto and Ignis had both gone still, watching with an intensity that told Noct that Gladio wasn’t the only one who needed to hear that promise.

So Noctis nodded, and was relieved when his friends relaxed, ever so slightly. “I promise,” he said. “I won’t disappear on you. Never again.”

Gladio took a deep breath, his shoulders finally relaxing. Prompto bumped his shoulder against Noct’s legs, and Ignis smiled, just a little.

Sure they had a lot of work ahead of them, and none of them knew what might happen in the coming weeks. But Prompto settled against Noctis’s legs, and Ignis turned back to his cooking, and Gladio crouched by the fire to poke it to life, and Noct leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

At least for now, everything was all right.

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the times used: one full 24-hour day cycle in FFXV is half an hour of real-life time. I finished Pitioss in about four and a half hours, which translated to about eight and a half actual days for the guys outside (nine 24-hour cycles, but since Noct starts at night and finishes in midafternoon, they say "eight").


End file.
